The region of the miraculous, it is called, and the bare possibility of its existence has been hastily and illegitimately denied. But so long as we do not imagine it to be a region denuded of a law and order of its own, akin to the law and order of the psychological realm, our denial has no foundation. The existence of such a region may be established by experience; its non-existence cannot be established, for non-experience might merely mean that owing to deficiencies of our sense organs it was beyond our ken. In judging of what are called miracles we must be guided by historical evidence and literary criticism. We need not urge a priori objections to them on scientific grounds. They need be no more impossible, no more lawless, than the interference of a human being would seem to a colony of ants or bees.
The Christian idea of God certainly has involved, and presumably always will involve, an element of the miraculous,—a flooding of human life with influences which lie outside it, a controlling of human destiny by higher and beneficent agencies. By evil agencies too? Yes, the influences are not all on one side; but the Christian faith is that the good are the stronger. Experience has shown to many a saint, however tormented by evil, that appeal to the powers of good can result in ultimate victory. Let us not reject experience on the ground of dogmatic assertion and baseless speculation.
Historical records tell us of a Divine Incarnation. We may consider it freely on historical grounds. We are not debarred from contemplating such a thing by anything that science has to say to the contrary. Science does not speak directly on the subject. If the historical evidence is good we may credit it, just as we may credit the hypothesis of survival if the present-day evidence is good. It sounds too simple and popular an explanation—too much like the kind of ideas suited to unsophisticated man and to the infancy of the race. True; but has it not happened often in the history of science that reality has been found simpler than our attempted conception of it? Electricity long ago was often treated as a fluid; and a little time ago it was customary to jeer at the expression—legitimate in the mouth of Benjamin Franklin, but now apparently outgrown. And yet what else is the crowd of mobile electrons, postulated by [not] the very latest theory, in a metal? Surely it is in some sense a fluid, though not a material one? The guess was not so far wrong after all. Meanwhile we learned to treat it by mathematical devices, vector potential, and other recondite methods. With great veneration I speak of the mathematical physicists of the past century. They have been almost superhuman in power, and have attained extraordinary results, but in time the process of discovery will enable mankind to apprehend all these things more simply. Progress lies in simple investigation as well as in speculation and thought up to the limits of human power; and when things are really understood, they are perceived to be fairly simple after all.
So it seems likely to be with a future state, or our own permanent existence; it has been thought of and spoken of as if it were altogether transcendental—something beyond space and time (as it may be), something outside and beyond all conception. But it is not necessarily so at all; it is a question of fact; it is open to investigation. I find part of it turning out quite reasonably simple; not easy to grasp or express, for lack of experience and language—that is true,—but not by any means conveying a feeling of immediate vast difference and change. Something much more like terrestrial existence, at least on one aspect of it, than we had imagined. Not as a rule associated with matter; no, but perhaps associated with ether—an etherial body instead of a material one; certainly a body, or mode of manifestation, of some kind. It appears to be a state which leaves personality and character and intelligence much where it was. No sudden jump into something supernal, but steady and continued progress. Many activities and interests beyond our present ken, but with a surviving terrestrial aspect, occasionally accessible, and showing interest in the doings of those on earth, together with great desire to help and to encourage all efforts for the welfare of the race. We need not search after something so far removed from humanity as to be unintelligible.
So likewise with the idea of God.
No matter how complex and transcendentally vast the Reality must be, the Christian conception of God is humanly simple. It appeals to the unlettered and ignorant; it appeals to "babes."
That is the way with the greatest things. The sun is the centre of the solar system, a glorious object full of mystery and unknown forces, but the sunshine is a friendly and homely thing, which shines in at a cottage window, touches common objects with radiance, and brings warmth and comfort even to the cat.
The sunshine is not the sun, but it is the human and terrestrial aspect of the sun; it is that which matters in daily life. It is independent of study and discovery; it is given us by direct experience, and for ordinary life it suffices.
Thus would I represent the Christian conception of God. Christ is the human and practical and workaday aspect. Christ is the sunshine—that fraction of transcendental Cosmic Deity which suffices for the earth. Jesus of Nazareth is plainly a terrestrial heritage. His advent is the glory, His reception the shame, of the human race.